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[casi] The lies that led us into war ...



http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=411300

The lies that led us into war ...
Glen Rangwala shows how the UK and the US manipulated UN reports - and
conjured an anthrax dump from thin air
01 June 2003

One key tactic of the British and United States governments in their
campaign on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction was to talk up
suspicions and to portray possibility as fact. The clearest example was the
quotation and misquotation of the reports of United Nations weapons
inspectors.

Iraq claimed it had destroyed all its prohibited weapons, either
unilaterally or in co-operation with the inspectors, between 1991 and 1994.
Although the inspectors were able to verify that unilateral destruction took
place on a large scale, they were not able to quantify the amounts
destroyed.

For example, they were able to detect that anthrax growth media had been
burnt and buried in bulk at a site next to the production facility at
al-Hakam. There was no way - and there never will be - to tell from the soil
samples the amount destroyed. As a result, UN inspectors recorded this
material as unaccounted for: neither verified destroyed nor believed to
still exist.

Translated into statements by the British and US governments, it became part
of "stockpiles" that they claimed Iraq was hiding from the inspectors. Both
governments knew UN inspectors had not found any nuclear, chemical or
biological weapons in Iraq since at least 1994, aside from a dozen abandoned
mustard shells, and that the vast majority of any weapons produced before
1991 would have degraded to the point of uselessness within 10 years.

Even the most high-profile defector from Iraq - Hussein Kamel, Saddam
Hussein's son-in-law and director of Iraq's weapons programmes - told UN
inspectors and British intelligence agencies in 1995 that Iraq had no more
prohibited weapons. And yet Britain's dossier last September repeated the
false claim that information "in the public domain from UN reports ...
points clearly to Iraq's continuing possession, after 1991, of chemical and
biological agents and weapons produced before the Gulf War".

There is no UN report after 1994 that claims that Iraq continued to possess
weapons of mass destruction. This was well known in intelligence circles.
That such a claim could appear in a purported intelligence document is a
clear sign that the information was "pumped up" for political purposes, to
support the case for an invasion.

The Government began to resort to more direct misquotation in the immediate
prelude to war, with UN chief inspector Hans Blix reporting on 7 March that
Iraq was taking "numerous initiatives ... with a view to resolving
long-standing open disarmament issues", and that this "can be seen as
'active', or even 'proactive' co-operation".

In response, Mr Blair and Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, seized on the
Unmovic working document of 6 March entitled "Unresolved Disarmament
Issues",about matters that are still unclear. Although Mr Blix acknowledged
Iraqi efforts to resolve these questions, the Prime Minister and Foreign
Secretary repeatedly claimed that the document showed Iraq still had
prohibited weapons, a claim the report never made. They relied on the
presumption - probably accurate - that few MPs would have time to go through
its 173 pages, and would accept the Government's misleading précis.

Mr Blair quoted from the report in his speech to the Commons two days before
the war began, to the effect that Iraq "had had far-reaching plans to
weaponise" the deadly nerve agent VX. Note the tense: that quotation was
from a "background" section of the report, on Iraq's policy before 1991.

US and British leaders repeatedly referred to the UN inspectors' estimate
that Iraq produced 1.5 tonnes of VX before 1990. But in March Unmovic
reported that Iraq's production method created nerve agent that lasted only
six to eight weeks. Mr Blair's "evidence" was about a substance the
inspectors consider to have been no threat since early 1991. The Prime
Minister didn't mention that.

Glen Rangwala is a lecturer in politics at Newnham College, Cambridge
   31 May 2003 21:23

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